L5R Cosmology: Shintao

Now we finally arrive at Shintao, and believe me, the wait was necessary.

In my previous post, I detailed the ur-religion of Rokugan as performed by the first humans, also known as the Tribe of Isawa. Now I must once again fast-forward a bit in our creation story by summarizing thusly:

The nine children of the Sun and Moon fell from the heavens. One of them, Fu Leng, fell away from the others, and his impact was such that he punched a hole straight into Jigoku (hell) and became a Villain To Be Named Later. Meanwhile, the others fell together (and more gently) and landed on Rokugan. When this happened, they immediately lost most of their divinity but still retained much power (demigods at the least.) One of these eight, Hantei, became Emperor and the other 7 swore fealty to him, creating the 7 Great Clans of the Emerald Empire.

Two things are worthy of mention here:

• The Emperor and Clan Founders were also considered kami, because of their divine origins. In order to differentiate them from all the other kinds of kami, we are going to call them kami-sama (respected kami).
• Of the kami-sama,  NONE of them were Shugenja. Just file that away for future reference. 

Having read this, it should come as no surprise to anyone that the socio-religious order didn't change one whit.  The Fortunes and O-kami were still worshipped; there were simply new bosses in town who were stronger and smarter than the old bosses. This is the foundation of the "We are samurai, we are better than you, because we are nobles and real people (i.e. descended from gods) and you are only half-people" caste system (also known as the Celestial Order), which is still present in modern Rokugan. More on this in a moment. 

For the average human, life went on pretty much as normal: you farmed, you prayed, and you tried not to die from disease or starvation or angry samurai... for the first 33 years, that is, because that's when Fu Leng invaded Rokugan with an army of demons. Apparently, the youngest kami-sama (who'd spent decades absorbing Jigoku's power, and basically becoming the god of hell) decided he didn't like how his siblings never went looking for him, or he was angry that he hadn't been invited to the tournament where they decided who would be emperor, or whatever. He was hell's champion, it's not like he needed a reason to attack. But the upshot is that that Fu Leng and his minions proceeded to kick the crap out of everyone and everything. He had slave races of ogres and goblins, he commanded demons, and he knew blood magic which was so powerful that it corrupted the traditional blood magic of the Isawa such that anyone who performed it became Tainted (think cancer of the soul) with the corruptive power of Jigoku.

And just when it looked like the Empire was about to crumble, a little old man walked up to the Emperor and said, basically, "The solution is right in front of you, but you're too blind to see it. Listen to what I have to say and I can solve all of your problems." 

The Emperor said, essentially, "Oh yeah, old man? Prove it."

And the old man, whose name was Shinsei, did just that. He took seven mortals -- not the kami-sama, but humans -- and the eight of them kicked the crap out of a demon-god, routed his armies, and bound him for over a thousand years.

Of course, Shinsei died while doing this, but his lessons -- many of them spoken to the Emperor himself -- were written down, and they became the Tao (Way) of Shinsei. These written lessons formed the core of Shintao, and they revolutionized EVERYTHING. 

There are really only two major tenets to Shintao, and you've already read both of them. The first is the concept of elemental rings, and how there is a progression of spirits from smallest to largest. This is the lesson learned by all shugenja, and without Shinsei, there would be no shugenja on Rokugan. 

The second tenet is the teaching that All Are One, the concept of universal unity through void.  

Big whoop, I hear you all say. We know this already. Yes, but what you are failing to grasp is the true application of these two principles, which is this:

If the void touches and encompasses and unifies everything, then I am everything and everything is me. I am the soil beneath my feet and the air that I breath. I am the tree under which I shelter and I am the fire that keeps me warm. I am the animals I eat. I am you. I am all of creation. 

You know what else is all of creation? That's right, the O-kami. 

Shintao says, "You are god and you don't even realize it. The only reason you can't access that power is because you aren't enlightened enough to access it. Get out of your own way and realize your own divinity."

Now just think about this for a moment. Shinsei says that this filthy peasant here is you. And you are that filthy peasant. And both of you are gods.

Shintao was not the great equalizer, it was the great humbler. It took the notion that the gods were somehow set apart and unattainable to all but a select few, and it threw that notion to the ground and stomped the pieces into dust. This is amazingly heretical stuff, because there is nothing an entrenched caste system hates worse than being told its repressed underclass is equal to them. 

But Shinsei got away with it, precisely because Rokugan needed to topple a god from his pedestal. Because of that, and his success, and the heroic sacrifice of himself and the Seven Thunders, Shinseism became revered and codified into Shintao. 

This heralded the emergence of the first truly ethical belief system in all of Rokugan. It works because it is very simple: "If all are one, then any wrong done to another is wrong done to yourself, and kindness shown to another is kindness towards oneself."

Or, put more succinctly, "Don't be a douche to yourself, dude."

In addition to a moral system, it also unified the Rokugani system of spirituality. Why are the kami amoral? Because man is inherently amoral, because you are them and they are you. Want them to act ethically? Then act ethically yourself. Karma, right action, social order, all of these things came about because a little old man said "I have empathy for you as if you were me."

This puts monks in a very interesting social position. Technically, they are peasants, but they are also highly esteemed due to their religious devotion. Only samurai can become shugenja, because shugenja training requires time and education and resources which non-nobles simply don't have, but anyone, even the filthiest untouchable, can shave his head, join a monastery, and seek enlightenment. At the same time, when samurai reach old age and retire, they often become monks in order to prepare their souls for the afterlife.

Monks are a social aberration because they allow anyone to join their ranks. They are an escape from, and an exception to, the caste system. Yesterday's gravedigger can become tomorrow's abbot who gets to order a freshly retired samurai to clean out the toilets because he's the newest novice.

Of course, despite being (by Imperial Decree) one of the core religions of the Empire, not everyone reveres Shintao equally. Peasants love monks (who are far more approachable than shugenja) but are typically too busy trying to feed their families to tend to spiritual correctness and Right Action. Samurai should be mindful of Shintao at all times, but compassion for others gets a bit... muddied... when bushido states you have to serve your lord faithfully, and he's just commanded you to kill those other people.

Also, frankly, most samurai are douches. There's a Rokugani saying which goes "Samurai are cursed to be reborn as samurai," which basically means that your karmic punishment for killing people in the name of honor is to be reborn as an ass who kills people in the name of honor. It's far, far easier for peasants to achieve enlightenment, or at least escape the karmic cycle of reincarnation, than it is for samurai.

The upshot of all of this is that most samurai pay only lip service to Shintao, because Fortunism is what get things done. This really only changes at the end of their lives, when they realize they may have to answer for all the bad things they've done in service to their lord.


This concludes the Basic Course of Coherent Rokugani Cosmology, and is all you need to know in order to play. More sophisticated topics will be addressed in the Advanced Course. 


If you have any questions, now is the time to ask them. 

L5R Cosmology: Religion in Prehistoric Rokugan

So having gone up the ladder from mikokami to o-kami, some of you are no doubt wondering, "How do humans fit into all this mess?"  I'm glad you asked.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to skip large chunks of the creation myth for now. Suffice it to say that humans were created when the bodily fluids of Lady Sun and Lord Moon fell to the surface of Rokugan and mixed. Therefore, humans are a perfect mixture of yin and yang, or courage and cowardice, or however else you care to explain a union of opposites. What's important is that humans were created and formed a society before the children of the Sun and Moon fell from the heavens and founded an empire, and even before people knew of the kami, they had an atavistic religion.

These humans worshiped the Sun and Moon, of course, because these things are primal. Heat and cold, life-bringer and life-taker; we've seen it time and again in our world. What is unusual is that these people also worshiped their dead ancestors, believing that their progenitors were somehow sticking around as spirits, watching their descendants, and looking after them.

At the same time, these people also worshiped the Seven Fortunes that were mentioned earlier who, unlike all the other kami, represent human agency. Put these two facts together, and we may logically derive the conclusion that the Seven Fortunes are in fact super-powerful ancestors who lived so long ago that practically all humans on Rokugan are considered to be their descendants.*

If you'd like to be a bit silly, just consider the Seven Fortunes to be the first Player Characters on Rokugan and who, for all their exploits, are now recognized as gods. Blows your mind a bit, eh?

Another interesting tidbit about Rokugani pre-history is that they had a form of magic that did not pay homage to the elements. In fact, all of their magic was blood-related. Again, this goes back to the roots of "Religion as a way of brokering a deal with the supernatural to get things done without any trappings of morality to get in the way."

Let's say you wanted someone to fall in love with you. For that, you go see Benten, the fortune of love. But, at least in the early days, Benten is just a powerful ancestor. Sure, she brings romantic success to her descendants, but you aren't related to her. You have to find some way to get her favor, because all of your prayers to your grandparents aren't doing jack.

The simple answer is to use the sympathetic magic. Benten cares about her family because of blood relation. In order to get Benten to care about you, there has to be a blood link between her and you. So, obviously, you ritualistically cut yourself and offer that blood to her. Now you are symbolically related, and clearly you care enough about her to suffer and bleed. The sympathetic principle (like produces like), with a sacrifice to sweeten the deal, ensures that Benten will now accept you as part of her family -- one of her bloodline. After a while, the shedding of blood was no longer needed, but it became institutionalized.

This is how it was for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years: an ur-religion based on bloodshed, power exchange, and material gain, without any of that messy ethical nonsense.

And then Hantei, Fu Leng, and all the rest fell to earth, and screwed everything up.

Next: Shintao, I promise.


* Before you get all up in arms about ancestors becoming fortunes, I have one word for you: Osano-wo. This man was so badass that he became the Fortune of Fire and Thunder in the span of time between his death and when his son, Kaimetsu-uo, assaulted the lands of the Phoenix. This rate of ascension makes the Seven Fortunes look like snails.

L5R Cosmology: the O-kami

Fresh on the heels of yesterday's post, I imagine that many of you are saying something to the effect of, Wait a minute. One giant universal godhead? That sounds far too much like western monotheism and not enough like multi-layered eastern spirituality.

To you, I say this.





All right then. First, the creation story of Rokugan:

In the beginning, before the universe was created, there was only Nothing. The Nothing that existed before the birth of all things was aware, and at some point during its timeless existence, it realized it was alone -- and thus experienced Fear. This unprecedented emotion was the first Sin, and created one third of the world. The realization of Fear also created in the Nothing a sense of loneliness and a desire for a companion. These sensations were the second Sin, Desire, and created a second third of the world. And when the Nothing realized what it had done, it experienced regret and a wish to unmake what it had mistakenly created. This was the third Sin, Regret, and it created the final portion of the world, completing it and ending the Nothing’s existence.

The newly-made universe was chaotic and formless at first, like an egg whose white and yolk had been intermixed. Slowly, the primal elements of creation seeped through the empty universe, and the energies pooled, with the heaviest sinking to the bottom and creating different layers of reality. Above was the Celestial Heavens, while below the mortal realm was born, as were the various other spirit realms and, finally, Jigoku, the Realm of Evil.

In the wake of the Nothing came three entities whose names have never been known by any living creature, mortal or divine, since that time. When they are spoken of at all, they are simply known as the Three Gods Whose Names Cannot Be Spoken.^[1] These three gods looked upon the new realms, particularly the mortal world, and recognized that it must be given form and purpose, an act beyond their means. In order to give shape to the universe, the three gods sacrificed themselves to give birth to a single man and woman, two divine beings who could do what the three before could not, and bring order to existence. Thus were born the Sun Goddess and the Moon God.

Lady Sun and Lord Moon looked down upon the mortal world and were perplexed by its formlessness. Ultimately, they realized they could only give form to what existed there by giving names to all the things that could be found in the mortal realm. They entered the mortal realm and named it, and doing so, they created names for themselves; Lady Sun became Amaterasu, and Lord Moon became Onnotangu. They began to name all they found there, such as stones, trees, deer, and all other things imaginable.

With the mortal realm fully formed, Amaterasu and Onnotangu returned to the Celestial Heavens, and Lord Moon’s ardor for Lady Sun grew more powerful with each passing moment until, driven by his obsessive love, he pursued the Sun across the sky, creating the cycle of day and night. Onnotangu eventually caught up with Amaterasu, and the sky was blackened during the middle of the day. It was at this time, the first eclipse, that the ten children of the Sun and Moon were conceived.

All right, pretty basic stuff here. I included this mainly for the sake of completeness, since there are some folks reading this who haven't played the game and aren't conversant with Rokugani mythology. The only thing that you truly need to take away from that story is this: Lord Moon and Lady Sun represent yin and yang.

Side Note: it bears repeating that kami are not moral creatures. Therefore, it is incorrect to say that Lord Moon is evil and Lady Sun is good. It is far more correct to say that Lady Sun embodies propriety (and therefore honor) and Lord Moon embodies impropriety and lack of honor. Again, divest your mind of the notion that honor = good. Other words for propriety are bureaucracy and stubborn pride, and impropriety is often another term for expedience and candor. 

Yin is characterized as slow, soft, yielding, diffuse, cold, wet, and passive; and is associated with water, earth, the moon, femininity and nighttime. Yang, by contrast, is fast, hard, solid, focused, hot, dry, and aggressive; and is associated with fire, sky, the sun, masculinity and daytime. 

-- from Wikipedia

Admittedly, many of the attributions aren't perfect, and the genders are switched; we can handwave that by saying "Rokugan is not Asia." That said, the comparison itself is apt: Sun and Moon are polar opposites who nonetheless complement each other, and when they come together they form a perfect whole. Elaborating upon yesterday's conclusion that the Void Dragon is Lady Sun and Lord Moon (and yet, at the same time, not), consider this:

Lady Sun is the white element (Yang)
Lord Moon is the black element (Yin)
The circle that they form is the Void Dragon.

The Void Dragon is the totality of the Four Elemental Dragons.

The Elemental Dragons are the gestalt intelligences of their respective mikokami. 

The mikokami are the building blocks of the universe.
Therefore, Lady Sun and Lord Moon are everything.
As it is written in the Tao of Shinsei, All Are One.

The tremendous implications of this philosophy will be addressed, I promise, when we reach the Shintao portion of this series.


^[1] I believe this to be an obscure in-joke regarding the original creators of the game: John Wick, David Williams, and D.J. Trindle.

L5R Cosmology: Of Void and Dragons

In this installment, we briefly step away from discussions about the kami (sort of) in order to blow your freaking minds. Helmets may be necessary.

Rokugani theology holds that there are five elements which comprise the world and affect the lives of mortals. You have already met four of them, and in addition to their expected physical qualities they also embody certain mental qualities. They are:

• Air is enigmatic and mercurial in all things, and represents an individual’s capacity for empathy and intuition. Those who are aligned with the element of Air possess superior instincts and speed of reaction. Those who are at odds with Air are physically sluggish and oblivious to the nuanced behavior of those around them.
• Earth is eternal, unchanging, and unmoving. It is the element of endurance and resistance, and represents an individual’s ability to withstand whatever trials arise. Those who are aligned with Earth have tremendous fortitude and resolve, while those who are at odds with Earth are frail and weak-minded.
• Fire is the element of dynamic change, energy, and destruction. It is the element of motion and illumination. Those who are strong in the element of Fire are great warriors, brilliant scholars, or possibly both. Those weak in Fire are physically uncoordinated and sluggish of thought.
• Water is the element of rapid change and alteration. It is the inexorable force that can carve mountains over thousands of years and the capricious storm that batters a ship one instant and gently carries it to its destination the next. Those who are strong in the element of Water possess incredible strength and perception. Those who are weak in Water are slow to move and possess dulled senses.

(Copied from the Legend of the Fire Rings RPG, 4th Edition)

All of this is quite understandable and familiar to our western minds. The fifth element, however -- the element of Void -- is anything but simple. There are many ways to explain the concept of Void, but the simplest I have found is just to look at a cup.

As you look at the cup, ask yourself this: What makes it useful for holding water? Is it the cup itself, or is it the empty space in the middle where the cup is not? Without that space, the cup is just a piece of ceramic, incapable of holding anything. The places where it isn't a cup are what make it useful. The nothing makes it something.

Now look again. Is the cup truly empty? Or is it filled with a limitless ocean of invisible air kami? You could have the Dragon of Air curled inside of your teapot and you'd never know. But just because you can't see it doesn't mean it isn't there.

So the cup is simultaneously empty and not empty. The nothing which makes the cup a cup is actually filled with other somethings. This concept that nothing is something, and something is nothing, is what we call the Void. It's all very quantum, being and not being at the same time, except that unlike in Schroedinger's experiment, looking at it doesn't collapse the waveform.

Void is a bit like the Force, in that it's everywhere and surrounds everything. It's where all the other elements meet, and therefore it touches and encompasses all of them. In a very real way, Void is the incarnation of all of the other four elements simultaneously, because Void exists where they blend into each other: a cliff (air and earth), a beach (earth and water), and a volcano (fire and earth) are perfect examples of Void.

But as I have said earlier, every element is comprised of an infinite number of spirits, and their gestalt is what we call an Elemental Dragon. So if Void is the perfect unity of all four elements, and is itself an element...

... then yes, that means there is a Void Dragon, and it is not only a separate entity in its own right, but also and simultaneously the gestalt consciousness of the Air, Earth, Fire, and Water Dragons. One might do well to call that truly immense and alien intelligence god.

And you'd be right, because the Dragon of Void is also (actually, simultaneously, and yet somehow wholly separate from) the O-kami, Lady Sun and Lord Moon, the divine incarnations of yin and yang.

Whom I shall explain in my next post.

L5R Cosmology: the Fortunes

Continuing from this post....

Next up from the mikokami (divine nature spirits which inhabit every object) are the Greater and Lesser Fortunes. These are still kami in that they are spirits, but unlike the others they are neither tied to tangible things, nor can they be controlled. If we were use a western paradigm, these kami are gods.

There are seven Greater Fortunes, copied more-or-less from the Seven Lucky Gods of Japanese folklore:

• Benten, Fortune of Romantic Love
• Bishamon, Fortune of Strength
• Daikoku, Fortune of Wealth
• Ebisu, Fortune of Hard Work
• Fukurokujin, Fortune of Wisdom and Mercy
• Hotei, Fortune of Contentment
• Jurojin, Fortune of Longevity

They are attended and served by an array of Lesser Fortunes too numerous (more than a dozen and perhaps less than a hundred) to be listed here. By way of example, Inari, the Fortune of Rice, is subservient to both Daikoku (as wealth in Rokugan is measured in bushels of rice) and Ebisu (because farmers harvest rice). These Lesser Fortunes are somewhere between demigods and lesser gods in terms of power, and because of that, they are often more approachable (more human) than their greater counterparts. In this regard, the Lesser Fortunes are more like the Roman Catholic conception of saints: people you pray to in order to get things done, because they have the ears of the higher-ups.

Although the Fortunes are kami, the differences are evident. These kami have names; the mikokami do not. The Greater Fortunes represent abstract concepts, not concrete objects like "a campfire" or "the river." (Interestingly enough, many of the Lesser Fortunes do embody more specific concepts, like "rice" or "the seashore," further cementing the notion that they act as intermediaries between the concrete spirituality of Ningen-do and the abstract divinity of Tengoku.)

Perhaps most importantly, the Seven Great Fortunes represent human agency* in that -- unlike the O-kami of Lady Sun and Lord Moon, or the mikokami of the material world -- the Fortunes would not exist in a world without people, because there would be no reason for them so to do. In other words, the world works perfectly fine without the existence of a god of strength, or wealth, or compassion. It's only through the intervention of human desire -- hope, fear, love, jealousy, ambition, etc -- that these gods exist. In fact, it could be argued these gods are the creation of human emotion. 

What's fascinating about the Seven Fortunes is that, much like humanity, they are neither inherently good nor inherently evil, and do not require moral conduct from their worshipers: Bishamon smiles favorably upon both an honorable Lion bushi and an honorless, tainted Crab, because both embody strength.

In fact, all kami are like this: just as Lady Sun's light nurtures the crops, her heat also ruins them.Too much water causes flooding, but not enough results in a drought. This amorality of both kami and their worshipers is important to understand, because it informs so much of Rokugani lifestyle. Specifically:

One can be a completely immoral, dishonorable ass, and the kami will still answer you as long as you pay them homage and say your prayers in the proper manner.

It is this lack of morality which resulted in the necessary creation of Shintao, which provided a much-needed ethical basis for Rokugani society, and which is in fact the bedrock of their civilization. However, the complex interplay of Shintao, honor, and ancestor worship will have to wait for my next post.

*Perhaps "human" is too limiting, what with the existence of self-aware races before the arrival of humans upon the face of Rokugan. Let's say "sapient" or "intelligent enough to have a culture."

L5R Cosmology: The Kami

Let's start small -- very, very small.

In Rokugan, samurai priestesses known as Shugenja commune and interact with spirits known as kami. This very simple word has a very complex definition, because it can mean both "god" and "spirit" and has no sense of scale whatsoever; pebbles contain kami, as do rocks, boulders, and mountain ranges. The clan founders are also kami, as well as the sun goddess Amaterasu, the moon god Onnotangu, the Seven Greater Fortunes, and the many Lesser Fortunes.

 The easiest way to explain a kami is also the most vague:

[A kami is] any thing or phenomenon that produces the emotions of fear and awe, with no distinction between good and evil.

For purposes of simplicity,  the kami we are discussing today are the mikokami, a.k.a. beautiful tiny gods. These are the "eight million gods" of folklore. We'll discuss the other kinds of kami later, but right now, when I say kami, be aware that I mean "elemental spirit" or "divine force of nature".

Kami live inside all material things, and at the same time are those things. If you can't conceive of something being a thing, and yet not being that thing because it is really the force which lives inside the shell of the thing, then you're going to have severe trouble from here on out. If it helps, think of your mind/soul/sense of self as a kami; without that, your body is just a shell, but at the same time your body is such an extension of yourself that it is you.

Now here is where things get complicated. If we assume that every river is Rokugan has a kami -- which every shugenja will tell you is true -- what happens if you draw a cup of water from that river? Is the river spiritually diminished? Does a new "cup of water" kami spring into existence? What happens when you drink it? Or when the river runs into the sea?

This is a riddle which baffled the Rokugani for centuries, and there are essentially two answers to it, one philosophical and one practical. The philosophical answer, which came about in the early days of the Empire, is that all are one: You are the cup, which is also the water, which is also the riverbank. Everything, everything, is linked and interconnected to the point where it doesn't matter, all of us are also all of creation, one giant god-soul, and once you realize this, you are able to live in harmony with the world because the world is you and you are the world, and the soul always lives in harmony with itself. This is known as enlightenment, and it's also very, very hard to achieve, because humans have all these senses telling them that no, I am completely different from that tree over there. A good chunk of enlightenment is un-learning concepts such as "I am an individual" and "I can trust what my senses tell me." [1]

The practical answer is that kami are infinitely divisible. Take two ladles of water, each containing two water kami, and pour them into a teapot. How many water kami do you have? Just one. Boil some tea, and pour that tea into four cups. You now have four water kami (possibly five if there's still some left over in the pot). Dump it all back into the river, and boom, it's all one kami again. They are aggregate spirits who seek concentration, yet lose none of their power if you divide them up. The smallest drop of water contains the same amount of power as the entire ocean. [2]

Now if you combine these two answers into one thought -- "all is one" and "potency is not lost through division" -- you arrive at a frighteningly powerful conclusion: every single droplet of water in Rokugan is linked to every other droplet of water, meaning that all water everywhere is a single, massive kami. This monstrously powerful kami is what is known as the Water Dragon, and there are other Dragons for the other elements. (Please don't ask about the Void Dragon right now, it'll just break your brain.)

While all kami may technically be called "gods", these Dragons are what humans think of when they hear the word god: powerful, alien, and distant. The Dragons are as far removed from humanity as humans are from bacteria, and understand them about as well. Therefore, every Dragon has an Oracle: a human whose soul is linked to that Dragon, and therefore shares a fraction of its power (and a fraction of nigh-infinite power is still a lot). These Oracles serve as eyes and ears for the Dragons, enabling them to understand from a human perspective all that happens on Rokugan and subtly influence events. [3]

What is interesting about Dragons is that they are dichotomous and somewhat contradictory. On one hand, what separates the Dragons from the Fortunes (other gods which will be explained later) is that they embody concepts that don't require human agency to exist. Objectively speaking, air always has been air and always will be air, and no amount of worship (or lack thereof) is going to change that. But on the other hand, air is more than just literal gas; it also represents connection and empathy. Fire is flame but is also burning passion; earth is determination and resistance in addition to being rock and soil; water is liquid as well as the strength that erodes rocks. It is entirely possible that this embodiment of abstract concepts is the result of the Dragons seeing themselves through human eyes.

Therefore: in Rokugan, there are lots of tiny spirits which are actually big spirits which are actually Dragons who then take human avatars who try to understand the humans who are trying to understand the tiny elemental kami spirits, and in so doing, influence the Dragons which influences the elements which influences the people.

All are one.



Footnotes:
[1] This will be discussed in greater detail under the "Shintao" entry.

[2]  The only difference is how well they apply that power, which is a combination of perception (smaller spirits don't notice as much) and leverage (smaller spirits don't know where best to focus that power). This is typically how shugenja achieve spell effects, by telling the spirits "You can achieve an awful lot if you do X thing at Y time and Z place for me."

[3] As a brief aside for fans of the card game: this "Dark Oracle" business is nonsense. Just because something resides in Tengoku doesn't make it virtuous, as Lord Moon aptly demonstrates. The Elemental Dragons find morality to be a strange, alien concept. Fire is neither good nor evil: it simply is. The waters that flood also irrigate. Air gives breath but also creates storms. Earth shelters, but also quakes.

Also, I pretty much ignore everything that happens after the Clan Wars anyway.

Towards a coherent L5R cosmology

As much as I love the Legend of the Five Rings RPG, I have to confess that its mythology makes no sense to me. And I'm not even talking about how the creation story is basically that of Zeus vs. Cronus, but with the names changed to Japanese, I'm talking about the deeply weird and contradictory stuff that you notice only after digging through some the history.

Now, normally I am a fan of the weird and contradictory, but I have a deep-seated need for things to make sense within my games, even if none of the players ever see it. Perhaps this is why I prefer to GM rather than play, because that way I can make sure things make sense to me. And frankly, L5R's mythology makes me so crazy that I actually mailed a letter to John Wick (one of its original designers) wherein I asked, essentially, What the fuck, dude?

Mr. Wick, I hope you'll forgive me for messaging you, but I am a longtime fan of L5R and there is something that's always puzzled me about its theology.

Specifically, how can Togashi be both a kami-who-fell-to-earth-and-thus-lost-his-divinity and a (literal) dragon? The same question applied to Shinjo and ki-rin.

Osano-wo is the Fortune of Thunder, but there is also a Thunder Dragon. I read somewhere they are both aspects of something greater. What would that something greater be?

It's almost like being a dragon or a ki-rin or whatever is more of a spiritual evolution than being a physical thing.... so perhaps Shinsei was the first Thunder Dragon?

Is Amaterasu a dragon? Is she something else? Both? Neither? Cheeseburger?

I love this setting but I can't figure out some of the theology. I get that, in the broadest sense, Fortunism = Shinto and Shinseism = Buddhism, but after that I get very lost. What are the differences between fortunes, kami, and dragons?

Again, I apologize for pestering you with questions about a game you made over 10 years ago. If you'd rather not answer, I understand, and will quietly go away.

To his great credit, Mr. Wick wrote me back:

Hi Erin,
Although I don't get paid to answer these questions anymore, I'll give you a quick one that should solve everything.

Rokugani theology *doesn't make sense*. Much like Japan, who tried to combine various religious traditions, there is overlap, redundancy and outright contradiction. That's why it is so confusing.

Hope that helps!

Well, then. On the one hand, this is great, because now I know I haven't missed something critical. On the other, telling myself "It's not supposed to make sense" doesn't work with me, because of my knee-jerk and admittedly non-Discordian desire to organize things coherently. So what this did was, in essence, tell me "If you think you can make it make sense, go for it."

And I did. Amazingly, my crazed gibbering is hardly noticeable these days.

At any rate, I think I've worked it out, and now I'm going to inflict it upon you, because A), this is my blog, and 2) I like giving back to the RPG community. I hope you like this sort of thing, because it's what you're going to get from me for the next few days.

Kanpai!